The education officer of Ashoknagar district issued the suspension order on Monday, saying open defecation amounted to misconduct and violation of the government's directives.

Representative image.

Bhopal: The education authorities in Madhya Pradesh have suspended a teacher of a government school for allegedly defecating in the open.

The education officer of Ashoknagar district issued the suspension order on Monday, saying open defecation amounted to misconduct and violation of the government's directives.

The teacher was posted at a government primary school in Budera village of Ashoknagar.

"In accordance with the directives of the District Collector, the education department has suspended the assistant teacher for open defecation with immediate effect. He was found violating the government's 'Swachh Bharat
Mission'," Ashoknagar district's education officer Aditya Narayan Mishra told PTI on Wednesday over the phone.

Under the Swachh Bharat Mission, the teachers are entrusted with the task of keeping a watch on people who defecate in the open but, on the contrary, this teacher was himself found defecating in the open despite having a toilet at his home, he said.

"The employees of Swachh Bharat Mission found the teacher going for open defecation and a report on the same was submitted to the District Collector. Not abiding by the government's directives regarding Swachh Bharat Mission amounts to misconduct and violation of the government's directives," Mishra said.

In June this year, the panchayat officials in Virpur village of MP's Raisen district had imposed a fine of nearly Rs 4 lakh collectively on 13 families for open defecation.

The Swachh Bharat Mission was launched by Prime Minister Narendra Modi on October 2, 2014, with the goal of making India clean and free of open defecation by 2019.